A staggering 43.8 million people in America have a diagnosable mental illness, according to a 2013 survey from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The survey shows that in 2013, around 15 million people had at least one episode of major depression.
One of the side effects of serious mental illness is a propensity to harm oneself: around 9 million people said they had thoughts of suicide and around 1.3 million of them attempted suicide. As for teens, around 2.6 million of them experienced episodes of major depression in 2013, but less than 40 percent of them actually saw a professional for help. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 11 percent of deaths in teenagers are attributed to suicide.
Adults do a better job of reaching out for help than do teens with around 68 percent seeking treatment for their serious mental illness. Seeking out professional help no longer has the same negative stigma attached to it as it did a decade or so ago, but many Americans still are not seeking out help.
The main issue keeping adults from seeking treatment, according to the survey, has nothing to do with the stigma attached to it; rather, people don’t seek treatment because they believe there is a cost barrier.
The Family Guidance Center is well-equipped to provide the kind of professional services that people with mental illness require. Adult mental health, children and youth services, addiction treatment, access crisis intervention and healthcare homes are all areas the professionals at Family Guidance work with day in and day out. Contact us for more information.
